Police are investigating a virtual sexual assault of a girl’s avatar, the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has said.
Donna Jones said she had learned that a complaint was made in 2023, triggering a police inquiry.
The virtual incident did not result in physical harm but caused “psychological trauma”, the Daily Mail has reported a source as saying. Police chiefs have called on platforms to do more to protect their users.
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The impact of the attack on the girl’s avatar was said to be heightened because of the immersive nature of the VR experience.
You’re not wrong, but the whole point of the article was basically “this is fucked up and something should be done about it. Can we use current laws to address it or do we need new ones?”
Helping to prevent people being harassed online is a good thing and doesn’t take away from the need to prevent it offline nor does it somehow invalidate people that have been assaulted.
My original tongue in cheek comment was in response to the victim-blamey comments acting like “it’s online, so it doesn’t count”.
I’m gonna try to level with you, and I need you to really pay attention to the words I use because I’m not insinuating anything other than what I’m saying.
I’ve seen VR chat. I know how online rooms like that work. If the person who was “SA’d” mistakenly clicked on a room that was far more lewd than what they were looking for, that’s on them. Ignorance is not a defense, and this is completely assuming that the “victim” was unaware of what they were doing when they entered the room.
There’s not a single piece of text suggesting that the “assault” or “harassment” continued offline.
This does not need a law. The only realistic thing to be done is to make sure rooms where stuff like this is prominent give a warning before joining. That is the only acceptable response, there is no reason for law to step in.
So it is the literal child’s fault for accidentally joining a “lewd” vr chat room…? The girl was under 16 in the article. If the VR chat service is setup so that literal children can get into sexually aggressive chat rooms completely unaware and by accident, I do believe there are a few laws being broken there.
If I’m not mistaken, rooms like this aren’t something you simply stumble into.